Just imagine if someone with the ethics and goals of a person like, say, J. Edgar Hoover were to get their hands on the information that can be "hoovered" up by the NSA, FBI, CIA, US Marshal Service, etc...

How many members of the three branches of government are susceptible to blackmail?

The old adage about the Golden Rule used to be "he who has the gold, rules" but now it's "he who has the information, rules."

And will the local guys who regularly fly RC fixed wing aircraft with wing spans of 10 to 12 feet have to register their bombers, interceptors, and Star Wars aircraft? Some of those things can actually drop stuff on people!

Agreed. My concern is that the body that gets to review the video and decide who can view it will be attacked by the losers in the case. If the requester supports the police's story and aren't allowed to view the footage, the committee/commission will be called a "bunch of cop haters" (and there are a couple of Techdirt columnists who would probably do that) and if the requester supports the suspect and isn't allowed to view the video, the committee/commission would be accused of hiding police brutality.

While most of the preceding comments have focused on law enforcement's access to the recordings, and how they may fiddle with them, I have a concern about the public, anyone in "the public" having access to a video of a naked woman who has just been raped, a naked man who is high on drugs, a dismembered corpse, and other things that will haunt the victims of crimes for ever. I would rather not let "the public" have access to those videos.

How do we determine who in "the public" should have access to all the video? As soon as we put someone in charge of deciding that issue, cries will go up that this person is hiding evidence of police misconduct.

The next thing will be signs on the doors of stores and banks saying that pressure cookers are not allowed in their establishments. That will certainly prevent anyone from attempting to use said device in a criminal enterprise.

Using the "beer finders" on the web sites of the respective breweries, it appears that the Long Trail beer is not sold west of Pennsylvania and that the Bent Paddle beer is not sold east of the Twin Cities in Minnesota and the city of Superior in Wisconsin.

Google Maps shows that it is approximately 850 miles from Erie, PA. to St. Paul, MN.

Even the most drunk and confused of beer purchasers would most likely sober up while driving from Erie to Superior (or to St. Paul) and realize that they were after the wrong product. That is unless they were purchasing more beer enroute.

That wasn't the point of my comment. The officer and his record of past thuggery (if there is one) should be open, just like any other citizen. But until that point, I don't think he should be considered guilty until proven innocent.

As a long-time libertarian, I do object mightily to the militarization of our local police. As I did not personally witness the alleged over-reaction of the city and county police to the demonstrations, I won't pass judgement... yet.

I do have one question. It is based on this quote:

"Here's one more, not that it should matter, but it does: Mike Brown had no criminal record.

Even if he was a criminal, his killing wouldn't be justified. But even the most die hard cop supporter has to wonder why a person with no criminal record would suddenly escalate a jaywalking beef to the point of trying to take an officer's gun."

Since we don't know if the officer involved has any history of abusing citizens, are we still going to assume that a police officer with no disciplinary background would suddenly escalate a jaywalking beef to the point where he would shoot an unarmed man who was not resisting?

Although other police officers have committed such crimes, that does not mean that this officer has done so.

"This mass spying is uniquely and profoundly un-American and will continue to undermine our freedoms. I am not arguing here that all spying is illegal -- just that spying on all of us is illegal.

Why bother with the formality of warrants when they permit all spying all the time? Spying on anyone not named in a warrant, or employing a warrant not based on probable cause, is the hallmark of those totalitarian regimes against which we have fought our just wars and our cold wars.

Yet today, the government in America seems more like the former enemies we vanquished than the place of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness the Framers established."

After all, it will be in the Congressional Record, and that document is available to everyone for free. It starts on page S6732 in the Congressional Record for Tuesday, 24 September. Here's a link to that PDF document:

What he's saying is that once the government (or any other organization or person for that matter) has information, there is the tendency to use it for purposes other than for what it was originally collected. This is human nature.

1 - Did they leave any back doors into the systems?
2 - Did they create some other accounts for later use?
3 - Did they already dump all the files they could find into a safe place?
4 - Who are they blackmailing already?

It sounds like a lot of these servers are UNIX or Linux based and the folks that administer those systems tend to be very creative.